The DOL Just Handed Employers 14 Free Compliance Toolkits—Here’s What They Don’t Tell You
The Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division just published fourteen compliance assistance toolkits covering everything from restaurant payroll to H-1B visa compliance. They’re free, comprehensive, and available right now at dol.gov.
After 30+ years handling DOL investigations and wage disputes, I can tell you these toolkits represent a significant shift. The government is essentially handing you the roadmap they use to evaluate compliance. Smart employers will grab these immediately.
But most businesses miss the critical gap: these toolkits tell you what the rules are—not how to apply them to your specific situation. That’s where expensive problems hide.
What the DOL Actually Published
The Wage and Hour Division released toolkits covering both industry-specific compliance and general federal requirements.
Industry-specific toolkits include garment manufacturing, agriculture, restaurants, construction, hotels and resorts, auto repair, and childcare. Program-specific toolkits cover the Fair Labor Standards Act, Family and Medical Leave Act, H-1B visa compliance, government contracts, youth employment, basic compliance, and natural disaster situations.
Each toolkit includes FAQs, guidance documents, required workplace posters, and downloadable materials. The DOL designed these to help small and mid-sized businesses understand complex federal labor standards without hiring expensive consultants.
Why Florida Employers Should Pay Attention
Florida businesses face particular wage and hour scrutiny. We’re a hotspot for restaurant litigation, construction disputes, and tip credit violations. Having the DOL’s own compliance guidance gives you defensible positions when disputes arise.
These toolkits provide the federal perspective on how laws should be applied. When investigators show up, they’re using the same frameworks these toolkits explain. Understanding their approach helps you spot problems before they do.
The Restaurant Toolkit Could Save You Six Figures (But Won’t Tell You How)
Florida’s restaurant industry generates more wage and hour litigation than almost any other sector. The Restaurant Employment Toolkit addresses tip credit calculations, dual jobs and the 80/20 rule, tip pool restrictions, overtime for tipped employees, and youth employment limitations.
The toolkit explains the rules—you can take a tip credit if you pay $2.13 per hour and tips bring the employee to minimum wage, you must inform employees of tip credit usage, tip pools have specific restrictions.
What it doesn’t address is how to structure your tip pool policy when you have both counter service and table service employees. Or how to calculate overtime when employees work both tipped and non-tipped positions in the same week. Or what “sufficient notice” of tip credit actually requires in your employee handbook.
These details determine whether your tip practices survive DOL scrutiny or generate class action exposure.
FLSA Guidance Won’t Solve Your Exempt Classification Problems
The Fair Labor Standards Act toolkit provides comprehensive information about minimum wage, overtime, recordkeeping, and child labor. It explains the salary basis test, the duties tests for various exemptions, and general exempt classification requirements.
Determining whether your assistant manager, lead technician, or senior sales representative qualifies as exempt requires detailed analysis of their job duties against complex regulatory tests. The toolkit gives you the framework—applying it correctly to your unique positions requires careful evaluation.
I’ve reviewed countless job descriptions that look exempt on paper but fail the duties test once you examine what employees actually do daily. The FLSA toolkit won’t catch these problems for you.
H-1B Compliance Intersects with Issues the Toolkit Can’t Address
The H-1B Compliance Assistance Toolkit covers Labor Condition Application requirements, prevailing wage obligations, and public access file maintenance. Valuable information if you’re sponsoring foreign workers.
But H-1B compliance intersects with immigration law, tax requirements, and state-specific wage regulations in ways the toolkit can’t fully address. Determining the correct prevailing wage for a specific position, maintaining compliant public access files during remote work arrangements, or handling H-1B portability during mergers requires analysis beyond what any single toolkit provides.
How to Actually Use These Materials
These toolkits work best as diagnostic tools, not complete compliance solutions.
Start with your industry toolkit if you’re in restaurants, construction, agriculture, or another covered sector. Review the common violations section—this shows you where the DOL focuses enforcement efforts.
Cross-reference the FLSA and FMLA toolkits regardless of industry. General wage and hour requirements apply to everyone. If you have 50 or more employees, the FMLA toolkit is essential.
Audit your practices against the checklists most toolkits include. Where you find gaps, problems likely exist.
Download and display required workplace posters. Each toolkit includes mandatory posters. Posting violations create easy liability in lawsuits and investigations.
Document your review. Keep records showing you reviewed relevant toolkits and assessed compliance. This demonstrates good faith compliance efforts if disputes arise.
The Critical Gaps
The toolkits won’t tell you how to fix violations you discover during your review. They won’t address whether your specific practices comply when fact patterns get complicated. They don’t explain how state laws interact with federal requirements in your situation, what documentation standards will protect you in litigation, or how to implement changes without creating legal admissions.
The toolkits identify the rules. Applying those rules to your unique business, workforce, and operational realities requires judgment and often legal guidance.
Why Free Government Resources Can Still Cost Money
I appreciate what the DOL is trying to do. Democratizing compliance information helps smaller businesses understand their obligations without expensive consulting fees.
But after three decades of handling DOL investigations, compliance questions are rarely simple. The toolkits provide frameworks—applying those frameworks to specific situations creates complexity fast.
The Restaurant Toolkit explains tip credit requirements. It doesn’t tell you how to restructure your current tip pool to comply after years of doing it differently. Or how to calculate back wages if you discover violations. Or whether you can use the PAID program to resolve issues proactively (you can, but only once).
Implementation questions matter more than understanding the rules in theory.
Your Action Plan
Download relevant toolkits today from dol.gov/agencies/whd/compliance-assistance/toolkits. These materials are genuinely helpful for understanding DOL expectations.
Conduct an initial self-assessment using toolkit checklists to evaluate your current practices. Identify potential problem areas before investigators do.
Update workplace posters immediately. Download current versions from the toolkits and replace outdated ones. This is easy compliance you can achieve today.
Don’t stop there. If your self-assessment reveals potential issues, you’ll need qualified labor and employment counsel to fix them properly.
Consider the PAID program if you discover wage violations during your review. PAID lets you resolve issues without civil money penalties or liquidated damages—but you need to act before the DOL investigates. Read my recent blog about the PAID program here.
Understanding Rules Versus Achieving Compliance
The DOL’s toolkits represent valuable free resources that every employer should review. They explain federal requirements clearly and provide helpful diagnostic tools.
But understanding what the law requires and implementing compliant practices across your specific business operations are different challenges. The toolkits bridge part of that gap—not all of it.
As a labor and employment attorney at Kelley Kronenberg with three decades of DOL investigation experience, I help Florida businesses translate federal requirements into practical compliance strategies that work for their unique situations. Whether you need help interpreting toolkit guidance for your specific operations, fixing violations discovered during self-assessment, or implementing compliant systems that protect you from future problems, we provide solutions that go beyond what free government materials can offer.
The DOL just handed you the compliance roadmap. Make sure you know how to follow it.
BONUS UPDATE!
The DOL just after the holiday break published six new opinion letters on FLSA and FMLA issues. They can be found here: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/opinion-letters/request
Similar to the Toolkits above, Opinion Letters can provide useful guidance regarding how the DOL interprets an issue or legal obligation. Moreover, following the guidance of an Opinion Letter can be used as a defense in later litigation over the same issue. Many savvy litigation prone businesses make formal requests for Opinion Letters on compliance grey areas as part of the risk mitigation strategies.
Contact me at Kelley Kronenberg to discuss how these compliance toolkits apply to your business, what steps you should take to address any gaps they reveal, or if you would like to request an Opinion Letter from the DOL about a particularly vexing compliance issue.
David S. Harvey
Partner and Business Unit Leader, Labor and Employment
Kelley Kronenberg – Tampa, FL.
(813) 223-1697
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